For the evaluation of web sites a multitude of metrics are available. Apart from general statistical measures, success metrics reflect the degree to which a web site achieves its defined objectives. Particularly metrics for e-commerce sites based on transaction analysis are commonly available and well understood. In contrast to transaction-based sites, the success of web sites geared toward information delivery is harder to quantify since there is no direct feedback of user intent. User feedback is only directly available on transactional web sites.
The fast development has established the Internet as a new medium for private and business communications and transactions. Private as well as corporate entities use this medium as a platform for presentation, communication, sales transaction, entertainment, service and information. Almost every company maintains a web presence and invests considerable amounts of time and money into increasing the attractiveness of their web site. The profitability of this investment is most easily measurable by the monetary value of the transactions handled by the web site. Many metrics have been developed for such web sites. But these metrics are not directly applicable for web sites without sales or purchase activity. This suggests a development of new metrics making the success of an information driven web site measurable.
The challenge in developing a new metrics rises from the main difference between transactional and information driven web sites, ie the user feedback. By purchasing a product on a web site, the user gives feedback about the web site and the whole purchasing process. He does not stay anonymous and provides personal billing data, making him identifiable when returning to the web site. In contrast to that, a user on an information driven web site stays anonymous and it remains uncertain whether he was interested in the content he visited.
In the following, an overview of existing metrics and measurements for web site success is provided. Before web measures can be developed, the objectives of a web site have to be specified. Regarding corporate web sites, the business models range from sell or purchase, inform, entertain or communicate via the Internet. The objectives of a web site can be derived from its business model, ie increase sales or improve usability or attractiveness. Consecutively, measures have to be defined to quantify or qualify the achievement of the respective objectives.
The applicant of the on hand specification analyzed web content to identify topics on web sites (C. Stolz, V. Gedov, K. Yu, R. Neuneier, and M. Skubacz. Measuring semantic relations of web sites by clustering of local context. In Springer LNCS: Proc. of 4th International Conference on Web Engineering, ICWE 2004, Munich, Germany, pages 182-186. Springer, 2004). This is a prerequisite to understand what a user is interested in, not yet a metric by itself.
Regarding web user and usage measurement, the measurements for content and structure by themselves cannot confidently measure the success of a web site, ie the users determine the success of a web site.
The user intention and by extension the web site's success can be easily measured if the user completes a transaction on an e-commerce site. On transaction based web sites a variety of success measures have been developed. In transaction based success measures, the users declare their intentions as soon as they are willing to pay for a product and purchase it, revealing also the monetary value or utility. If a purchase is conducted on a web site, this makes the success measurement straightforward and allows deeper analysis of the whole purchase process.
However, in information provision based success measurements, the absence of transactions makes it challenging to discover the user's intention and satisfaction. Most approaches combine structural, content and usage data to uncover the user's intention.
The applicant of the on hand specification already compared the user's intention and web site perception with the intentions of the web author identifying inconsistencies between both user and web author. This metric regards the whole web site and all users as a whole, resulting in an indicator for improvements in web site design. Such approach allows a qualitative but not success oriented judgment about a web site.
Summarizing the existing success based metrics for information driven web sites, the utility of a new quantification of the web site's success is considerable.